


To Look at Something Beautiful

by Jinklo



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: F/M, Plot what plot? The nonexistent kind.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 04:55:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11729931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jinklo/pseuds/Jinklo
Summary: Vanessa thinks about Dorian Gray's and his smiles.Or: all the descriptive, flowery, symbolic fluff I could cram into 333 words. ^__^





	To Look at Something Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always conflicted about my short plotless fics, should I post them? Shouldn't I? And then I figure, someone will like it. SOMEONE will. :)  
> Hope you enjoy

    When Dorian is standing there, unmoving, features so perfectly, carefully, laid bare, he is beautiful. The most beautiful person Vanessa has ever seen. But it's a strange beauty. Unearthly, alien, and ethereal. Untouchable. Like a delicate glass sculpture that is too complete to touch. A marble statue, that is somehow the epitome of frozen gracefulness. Beauty that you can only ever _watch._

    But when he smiles, it lights up his face, makes his eyes crinkle and his whole expression loosen into life. The marble cracks, and displays an entirely different type of beauty. The  kind draws you in and charms you into things you didn't know you wanted. The kind that one needn't be afraid of touching. The kind that welcomes it. 

    Vanessa was prepared for the marble statue, the unreachable beauty. But this smile, that slips past her defenses so smoothly, is her undoing. She was not prepared for this. The smile makes her weak in the knees, makes her breath come short. She doesn't even notice that she's just standing there, unspeaking, until she does. And then she flushes because she realizes that just now, she was imagining kissing those expressive lips.

    Dorian Gray wears a mask of calm beauty that barely covers something that looks like reckless desire. She wears a mask as well, one of grace and poise and she likes to think that it covers her dark side fairly well. But around him she feels it slipping. When they met it was inevitable that something would give.

    Vanessa thinks it must have been her. 

   After he's gone she blinks rapidly, trying to assure herself she has not woken up from what could only have been a dream. Because beauty like his does not belong in a world like this, so filled with ugliness and duplicity. And then, as she glances after him, Vanessa tries to pretend to herself that she doesn't anticipate meeting Dorian Gray's dark side, just as much as she anticipates another of his beautiful smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> I forget which episode this scene was based off but it's the one with the flower that only blooms every fifteen or so years.


End file.
